Yahoo! Mail – wow

New upgrade

Yahoo! Mail gets a complete upgrade. The UI is lot cleaner, ads on the left gone, only one ad on the page! That’s a great upgrade.

The left pane is lot more clean than it was with all those small irritating ads. Calendar and Notepad are pushed to applications section, which looks lot cleaner. Next thing to do is integrate the UI of calendar and notepad in to the mail UI. This upgrade is very clean, I like it and it’s lot more easier on the eye. I hope Yahoo! adds thread support too. The space after the check box is a hint if I’m not wrong.

It all depends on how well the applications are integrated into the yahoo mail experience. Otherwise, everything is cool minus the threading experience.

Y! Image search gets cool day by day… one feature at a time…

Y! Image Search

Go check out yahoo image search… search for taj mahal…
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=taj+mahal&ei=utf-8&iscqry=&fr=sfp

Update: I think this is in a bucket, here is the screen shot.

The left bar contains related topics and thumbnails, which can boost number of searches by the user and gives relevant images quickly with out much typing.

Or is this an old feature that I’m seeing today? :-p

Someone lost his orkut account to me

Should I say someone lost his account to me or should I say someone tried to impersonate me? I don’t know. I created a new ymail account some time back and I don’t check that email frequently. One evening I checked that account and to my surprise, a mail from orkut was in my inbox asking to verify email address of the google account. Some one created an orkut account with my email address.

I was eager to know if the person was trying to impersonate me (WT*! I’m not a celebrity) or he was lazy to create an email account or it was a typo. I just confirmed clicking on the link in the mail and end of the story. The email is verified for the orkut (google) account. And the next thing, I want to log onto orkut and see if the person was trying to impersonate (rare chance). And now I need the password of the account, which obviously is an easy task. Just went to the forgot password link and the nice guys (software) at google sent me a reset password link just after verifying a captcha. This shows how sucky our current password recovery mechanisms are. Gotcha! I got the new password and the account is mine now. Logged on to the orkut account and saw the profile information. WT*! The guy has his complete postal address, phone numbers etc. on his profile.

How can people just make such stupid mistakes? It was a nice week’s time since the creation of the account. So, next time you are creating any account and your email address is your user name, be careful, don’t do such stupid mistakes. This could have been worse if google actually sends the password instead of the reset link. Most people would have same password for multiple accounts. And if I can find the person’s other email address or any other account with the same password, then it’s a complete mess of his online presence.

Had I waited with out resetting the password for some time, that would have been worse. The guy would have used the account and built his network, after which I can take control of it. Now I’m going to call him on his mobile and tell him this!

When humans help robots…

How do you say humans and computers are different? Can computers solve all the problems that can be solved by humans? There came a beautiful test called the CAPTCHA – Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. It is extensively used on the Internet as a challenge to all the robots out there trying to spam systems on the Internet. But, when humans break CAPTCHAs for not-so-good reasons, what can any technologists do?

Recently, I read an article on India’s CAPTCHA solving economy on ZD Net. There are lot of companies which are involved in CAPTCHA breaking business. They receive $2 per 1000 CAPTCHAs broken. These broken CAPTCHAs can be used by attackers to register fake accounts on sites like Yahoo!, Google, Facebook etc. And robots can also use these to comment on your blog, if you are using a CAPTCHA to prevent robots.

On one side India is receiving laurels from the international community for her success in Information Technology; on the other side these immoral (to me) businesses are appealing for people who look for a quick buck.

When humans help robots, it’s a disaster for technology.

Read the complete article on ZDNet

Annoying video ads on IBN Live

Advertising has evolved. Video ads are good, but it doesn’t feel good when you open some web page and hear some noise that you din’t ask for. Such is the video advertising by the ad-dollar hungry site – ibnlive.com

Annoying iphone advertisement plays some sound track when I open ibnlive.com home page. Such a bad user experience. The ad guys at IBN need to think of what ads should they show on their home page.

BTW, iphone looks very overpriced. If I’m right iphone is trying to push 3G phones in India and TRAI has just given 3G regulations in India. Until 3G comes in, we dont know what the usage charges will be. Think before you buy an iphone at the price of 31-36K INR.

Bye Bye ibnlive.

In the name of CNN, comes the malware

I trust my mail provider to filter all the spam, but I regularly check the spam folder to avoid false positives. Any way false negatives show up in Inbox.

Email scams are normal, I’ve learnt to live with it. This is a recent scam that I saw. The email says “CNN.com Daily Top 10″ which has a lot of links (all pointing to the same page). It’s very appealing with the recent news headlines or celebrity names in the links.

The links lead to a rogue site that asks you to install an activex control. Even if you press cancel, it asks you again and again and it’s almost a DoS attack on your browser. You gotta kill the browser or install the malware.

I love Microsoft (and other browser guys) for this. What if the default setting is to automatically install ActiveX controls with out asking the user. How many of the users would change the default setting.

The minds behind this might be trying to create a bigger botnet. You definitely don’t want your computer to be a part of a world wide botnet that can pull down websites and cause a havoc on the Internet. Recently Georgia president’s website was subject to similar DDoS attack through a botnet.

Do not install any ActiveX with out properly knowing what it does.

Update: Another variant of the mail, which is more convincing mail with one link to cnn.com and one link to a different rogue site. Be careful when clicking links. Even your computer can be affected by this.

Nigerian scam turns religious!

I’ve seen many Nigerian scam mails since I started using e-mail, but this one is new to me. It’s directed towards “devoted Muslims” (as said in the email). It’s another aspect of “Social Engineering”. I feel people who don’t know about Nigerian scams will believe it easily because it’s not addressing everyone and is directed specifically towards Muslims. I think the spammer/scammer has no technology to figure out if I’m a Muslim or not from my e-mail address.

The mail’s subject is “Assalam Aliekum”. Here is the e-mail:

Assalam Aliekum, Waramotuhu LLAHI Wabarakathuhu
Praise Allah, The Most beneficent, The most merciful

I am Mrs. Malika Raza Azeem from Islamic Sharia Region part of Zanfara Nigeria. I am married to late Dan Usman Abdul-Azeem (Inna LLAHA wa Inna Lehi Rojihuun) of blessed memory who worked with Nigeria Embassy in Gambia for nine years before he died in the year 2003. We were married for 14years without a child. He died after a brief illness. Since after his death, I have been battling with cancer and fibroid problems.When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of USD$25M (Twenty five million United States Dollars) with an oversea security company.

Recently, my doctor told me that my days are numbered due to my cancer problem.Having known my condition, I decided to donate this fund to Islamic organizations or devoted muslim individual that will utilize this money with all sincerity to the will of Allah, to fund Mosques, Orphanages, Widows and also propagating the Word of Allah and to ensure that the society upholds the views and beliefs of the Holy Scripture Quran). The Holy Scripture emphasized so much on Allah’s benevolence and this has encouraged me to take this bold step.

I took this decision because I have no child that will inherit this money and my husband relatives are new Converts and I don’t want my husband’s hard earned money to be misused by people I call unbelievers. I don’t want a situation where this money will be used in an unholy manner. I know that after death, I will be with Allah the Most beneficent and the most merciful.

I don’t need any telephone communication in this regards because of my health and also because of the presence of my husband’s relatives around me always.As soon as I receive your reply, I shall give you the contact of the Security Company in Abroad where the fund is been kept.

I will also issue you a letter of Authority and other necessary documents that will prove you as the original beneficiary of this fund.My happiness is that I lived a true devoted muslim worthy of emulation.(Eidina Siratal Lmustakheem). Whoever that wants to serve Allah must serve HIM in truth and fearness. Yah ayuah Ledhina Aamanu, Irjihi Illa Robika, Rodihatan, Mordihatan).

Any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing for another Islamic organization or a devoted muslim for this same purpose.Maa Sallam (Inna Laha ma na)

Regards.
Mrs Malika Raza
malikaraza11@yahoo.xxx

Looking at the headers, email tracer on cyberforensics of India suggests that it’s originated from France (probably from a cyber cafe or home computer?). The site displays all possible details if you paste the full headers of the e-mail.

Muslims out there, don’t fall for it in the name of charity. This may (will) spread in the name of other religions also, so be careful.

FutureBazaar – The Worst Shopping Experience

I love the business model of Big Bazaar, but their online counter part sucks. The site is not a great one, but not bad too. I tried to shop some t-shirts on the site, I think it doesn’t like me. Always throws Null Pointer Exceptions.

Well, Java – the language I program in, Null Pointer Exception is the last thing you want to display to the user. The worst thing is that after validating my credit card, the redirection from my Banker’s site to the merchant site failed. FutureBazaar has thrown a null pointer exception.

Hell with it, I’ve to file an application for refund now. Careful when you shop on future bazaar.

The all new Yahoo! Mail stationery rocks

I just opened Yahoo! Mail and was wondering why it’s taking time to load. Yay! Yahoo! Mail has a new update. One big feature is the stationery in compose screen. Now you can add a background to your e-mail. This is really cool feature.

I’m not a big fan of fancy html mails at work, but this looks really simple and appealing. Looks very light and elegant. Liam will be my default stationery from now.

Some time back, I remember filling a (really long) survey on Yahoo! Mail. This seems to be an outcome of that survey. I wish other features that were in the survey will also come soon.

And yeah! There is no banner advertisement in compose screen!

I’m a die-hard fan of Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! mail rocks, keep going.

A new bot ring

I see a lot of (possibly) bots back in India chat rooms. What ever message i send them, just one reply…

nalini_f21: Hello Friend Send Email 2 Chat.Here’s My E-mail address     —–  nalini25f@rediffmail.com <x>

A lot of IDs are logged into messenger, I see the same pattern “_f21″, and the number differs to appeal to a lot of audience. :-p

I think these guys broke both yahoo and rediff captchas and trying to capture e-mail addresses from users who mail to that address. And even if these are reported as spam on yahoo, their rediff accounts are safe.